36 INTHOM'I; 



been very low. More of them, when ■peaking of I'r. Morton's 

 ( irania Americana. 



Before the arrival of tlie Mexican foreigners, this plain 

 inhabited l>v races, some civilized and some barbarous, who hate 

 left behind them the splendid ruins <>f Palenque. Ainu.:: these were 

 the Tarascas, the Othomi, the Totonacs, and the Huaxtecas. The 

 Othomi were ;i remarkable people, from the circumstance that, 

 while all other known lac America are polysyllabic, they 



li;nl ;i monosyllabic dialect, resembling the Chinese idiom. 



In tlie countries t'> the eastward of the Gulf of California, 

 extending northward as far as the rivers Gila and Colorado, ruins 

 have been found in Virions localities, which are supposed to be tin? 

 differenl resting places of the Aztecs in their migration towards 

 Anahuac; th<- farthesl vestige towards the north of tl, 

 civilization is in the neighborhood of to la, which flows 



into the 1 i 1 « » < lolorado. 



Among the aborigines of North America there are only two 

 races which can l>c ti I itinent, from th 



the Atlantic Ocean ; these are the two northern nations of the Esqui- 

 i and the V.thapascas. The Esquimaux, subsisting principally 

 on what they <>!>t tin from the sea, up- rarely found more than one 

 hundred miles from the coast; they inhabit America, chiefly north of 

 the 60° of north latitude, from the east coast of < Ireenland, in Ion 

 20°, to Behring's Straits, in longitude 167° west; they occupy an 

 extent of coast of five thousand four hundred miles ; they have the 

 Mongolian cast of countenance. The Athapascan, <>r Chepewyans, 

 extend from the western shore of Hudson's Bay, across thi I 

 ncnt to the Pacific ; t lit? i r southern boundary is Churchill river, 

 which falls into Hudson's Bay ; they atrree in dress and manners, 

 according to Mackenzie, with the Eastern Asiatics. 



The greater part of Canada, and the United Stales east of the 

 Mississippi, at the time of its discovery, was inhabited by two prin- 

 cipal races, the Algonquin-Lenape and the Iroquois, or Hurons ; 

 both were divided into a great number of tribes, which recognized, 

 however, their kindred with each other. The limits of the former 

 were, in general terms, Churchill river on the North ; the Atlantic 

 coast on the east, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Cape Hat- 

 teras ; on the south, an irregular line drawn from Cape Hatteras to 

 the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi ; and, on the 

 the Mississippi river. The Iroquois, always at war with the for- 

 mer, consisted of two bodies — the northern, entirely surrounded by 

 the Lenapian tribes, in the neighborhood of Lake Huron ; the south- 

 ern were the Tuscaroras, in Virginia and North Carolina. 



